THE INFLUENCE OF PRECEDING MOVEMENTS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF BALLET JUMPS

The purpose of this study was to gain more insights about the individual technique used in the performance of ballet jumps and determine the influence of preceding movements in the efficiency of its performance. Seven female ballet students participate voluntarily in the study. Ground reaction forces were measured using a Bertec force plate. A triaxial accelerometer was placed at the low back of the subject on the skin surface, approximately at the height of the centre of mass. Results suggest that generally, a positive influence from preceding movements was observed in the performance of the selected jumps. Jumps preceded by only one movement, show a tendency to an increase in the reached height. Due to an immature technique of performance, our ballet students did not use appropriately preceding movements to potentiate the subsequent jumps

Imitation-creation processes in teachers’ education = Имитационно-созидательные методы в педагогическом образовании

The research was carried out with a teacher educator employed in a Bachelor’s Degree Program of a Brazilian institution. The aim was to assess the processes concerning the development of teachers throughout teachers’ education, following the principles of Cultural-historical theory. The theoretical-methodological procedure applied was the didactic-formative intervention, understood as a collective investigation-education process that intervenes with teaching. Such intervention happens with the development of interdependent and simultaneous actions of training, planning and implementation of teaching and studying activitie

Composite Central Face Design—An Approach to Achieve Efficient Alginate Microcarriers

Funding: This work was supported by Portuguese Agency for Innovation (PT2020) through the projects (CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000014) and (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-017771). It was also supported by the project PAMI – Portuguese Additive Manufacturing Initiative (project nº22158 – SAICT- AAC nº 01/SAICT/2016) and also, by the CDRSP– ID/Multi/04044/2019, funded by the Portuguese Government through FCT/MCTES and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Partnership Agreement PT2020. This work was also supported by funds from the Health Sciences Research Center (CICS-UBI) through National Funds by FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology (UID / Multi / 00709/2019).Microparticulated drug delivery systems have been used as promising encapsulation systems for protecting drugs for in vitro and in vivo applications, enhancing its stability, providing an increased surface to volume ratio, reducing adverse effects, and hence an improvement in bioavailability. Among the studied microparticles, there is a rising interest in the research of alginate microparticles for pharmaceutical and biomedical fields confirming its potential to be used as an effective matrix for drug and cell delivery. Moreover, calcium alginate has been one of the most extensively forming microparticles in the presence of divalent cations providing prolonged drug release and suitable mucoadhesive properties. Regarding the above mentioned, in this research work, we intended to produce Ca-alginate micro-vehicles through electrospraying, presenting high encapsulation efficiency (EE%), reduced protein release across the time, reduced swelling effect, and high sphericity coefficient. To quickly achieve these characteristics and to perform an optimal combination among the percentage of alginate and CaCl2, design of Experiments was applied. The obtained model presented to be statistically significant (p-value < 0.05), with a coefficient of determination of 0.9207, 0.9197, 0.9499, and 0.9637 for each output (EE%, release, swelling, and sphericity, respectively). Moreover, the optimal point (4% of alginate and 6.6% of CaCl2) was successfully validated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

CVD of CrO2: towards a lower temperature deposition process

We report on the synthesis of highly oriented a-axis CrO2 films onto (0001) sapphire by atmospheric pressure CVD from CrO3 precursor, at growth temperatures down to 330 degree Celsius, i.e. close to 70 degrees lower than in published data for the same chemical system. The films keep the high quality magnetic behaviour as those deposited at higher temperature, which can be looked as a promising result in view of their use with thermally sensitive materials, e.g. narrow band gap semiconductors.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

The effect of pulmonary rehabilitation in salivary microbiota of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a longitudinal study

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is the most cost-effective therapy for this disease with several physical, psychological, and social benefits widely demonstrated. Nevertheless, its impact on the microbiota of people with COPD has not been established. This study aimed to investigate the effect of PR in the salivary microbiota of people with COPD. Methods: Patients were followed for 6 months. The experimental group undertook a 12-week community-based PR programme and the control group was not submitted to any additional intervention. Saliva samples were collected monthly, and 16S rRNA sequencing of oral microbiota was performed. Bioinformatic and statistical analyses were conducted with QIIME2 v2020.8, R v3.6.0, GraphPad Prism v8, and IBM SPSS Statistics v27. Generalized Liner Mixed Models were used to evaluate microbiota dynamics over time. Relative abundance analyses were conducted with LEfSe and ANCOM. Alpha- and beta-diversities were estimated with Faith and Shannon indexes and Weighted-Unifrac distance, respectively. Results: Seventy-six patients were included; 38 in each group with no significant differences in their baseline characteristics (control group: 31 male, 70±7.6y, FEV1pp 52.34±19.76 and experimental group: 29 male, 72±9y, FEV1pp 49.15±16). The microbiota of patients undergoing PR changed significantly over time compared to patients of the control group (p<0.0001). Moreover, PR seemed to reduce the heterogeneity of the microbiota composition. At phylum level, most patients submitted to PR presented a significant increase in Proteobacteria (p=0.030) and Fusobacteria (p=0.0007) and a decrease in Bacteroidetes (p=0.046). No significant differences were observed in the control group. An increase in Haemophilus as consequence of PR (LEfSe effect size for significance>2) was also observed. No significant differences were found on the average microbiota diversity within each patient in response to PR. Conclusions: Our study suggests that PR modulates the oral microbiota of patients with COPD significantly. In the short term, it seems to become closer to the profile characteristic of the disease mainly due to the increase in Proteobacteria and decrease in Bacteroidetes. Future studies should address the implications and stability of these microbiota modifications.publishe

Desenvolvimento de um bloco cerâmico para a construção sustentável

O projecto cBloco teve como objectivo, desenvolver um sistema de construção de alvenaria que cumpra as exigências regulamentares aplicáveis, melhorando as características de desempenho mecânico, térmico e acústico relativamente aos sistemas tradicionais de tijolo cerâmico furado. O cBloco é um elemento cerâmico com pasta aligeirada com resíduos da indústria da madeira, cortiça e celulose, o que, para além de reduzir a massa, reduz o consumo da energia utilizada na cozedura, e aliado a uma geometria optimizada confere um isolamento térmico melhorado. Trata-se de um sistema constituído por uma peça base que é complementada por um conjunto de peças especiais, adaptadas aos diferentes pontos singulares da construção, o que permitirá reduzir os desperdícios em corte de material e os consequentes resíduos da construção. Este projecto, liderado por um consórcio de fabricantes do sector da cerâmica designado por NAC – Novas Alvenarias Cerâmicas foi coordenado pelo CTCV e contou com a colaboração da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto e da Universidade do Minho, tendo sido apoiado pela ADI (Agência para o Desenvolvimento e Inovação)

Airway microbiota diversity and composition correlates with the severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

No abstract available.publishe

Hereditary Neuropathy with Liability to Pressure Palsy Presenting with Hand Drop in a Young Child

Hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsy (HNPP) results from the deletion of the PMP22 gene in chromosome 17p11.2. Clinically, it presents with painless pressure palsies, typically in the 2nd and 3rd decades of life, being a rare entity in childhood. We present the case study of a six-year-old male child who presented with left hand drop that he kept for over four weeks. Electrophysiological studies suggested HNPP and genetic studies confirmed it. With this paper, we pretend to create awareness to this entity as a diagnosis to be considered in a child with painless monoparesis and to emphasize the importance of electrophysiological studies in the diagnosis

Microalgae biomass as an alternative source of biocompounds: New insights and future perspectives of extraction methodologies

Microalgae have characteristics that make them unique and full of potential. Their capacity to generate interesting bioactive molecules can add value to various industrial applications. However, most of these valuable compounds are intracellular, which makes their extraction a major bottleneck. Conventional extraction methodologies have some drawbacks, such as low eco-friendly character, high costs and energy demand, long treatment times, low selectivity and reduced extraction yields, as well as degradation of extracted compounds. The gaps found for these methods demonstrate that emergent approaches, such as ohmic heating, pulsed electric fields, ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, or high-pressure processing, show potential to overcome the current drawbacks in the release and extraction of added-value compounds from microalgae. These new processing techniques can potentially extract a variety of compounds, making the process more profitable and applicable to large scales. This review provides an overview of the most important and promising factors to consider in the extraction methodologies applied to microalgae. Additionally, it delivers broad knowledge of the present impact of these methods on biomass and its compounds, raising the possibility of applying them in an integrated manner within a biorefinery concept.Vitor Sousa acknowledges the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for their fellowship UI/BD/151238/2021. This study was supported by the FCT under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 and UIDP/04469/2020 unit, by LABBELS – Associate Laboratory in Biotechnology, Bioengineering and Microelectromechanical Systems (LA/P/0029/2020). This research work was supported by ALGAVALOR - Lisboa-01-0247-FEDER-035234, supported by Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (COMPETE2020), Lisbon Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa 2020) and Algarve Regional Operational Programme (Algarve 2020) under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This work was funded by NORTE2020 Funds through the SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH - “STRUCTURED R & D & I PROJECTS” - HORIZON EUROPE under the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000070. Ricardo Pereira and Oscar Dias acknowledge FCT for the Assistant Research contract obtained under CEEC Individual 2017 and 2018, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparative studies of ultrasound and membrane emulsification for the production of stable Perfluorocarbon-in-water nanoemulsions

Low-molecular weight perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are usually chemically and biologically inert, clear, colorless liquids, presenting a high affinity for many gases, namely for O2, NO and CO2, which turn them particularly suitable in various biomedical applications involving gas capture, transport and release. In fact, PFC-in-Water emulsions were one of the two major classes of systems proposed as blood substitutes and for O2/NO therapeutics. However there are still some important issues concerning this type of systems which have limited their efficiency, approval and commercial success, namely those related to emulsion stability, hydrodynamic size distribution and reduced shelf-lives. Stability issues can easily lead to PFC diffusion in water, to aggregation and to the consequent hydrodynamic size increase and emulsion degradation [1]. Nanoemulsions (typically within a range of hydrodynamic sizes of 10-100 nm) exhibit various advantages over typical microemulsions [2]. Hence, our aim is to produce monodisperse PFC nanoemulsions presenting larger surface-to-volume ratios, enhanced stabilities and more efficient gas capture/delivery properties. A first approach to achieve these goals is to prepare and to study a mixed surfactant system based on Tween 80 and on a perfluorinated surfactant (perfluorooctyl phosphocholine) at different relative compositions. PFC-in-Water nanoemulsions were produced by using the traditional ultrasound emulsification method (500W). The effects of co-surfactants relative compositions on CMC values, on the kinetics of emulsion formation and on the corresponding stabilities of prepared nanoemulsions were evaluated. Hydrodynamic sizes and Zeta-potentials were also assessed, being able to obtain stable nanoemulsions with hydrodynamic sizes between 150 and 200 nm. In a comparative study, PFC-in-Water nanoemulsions were also produced by membrane emulsification. This low energy-intensive technique has received increasing interest as it allows more flexible operating conditions. Regenerated cellulose membranes such as Nadir UC500 and Millipore Ultracel RC100, polyethersulphone membranes such as Nadir UP150 and Millipore PBHK04310, and a promising polycarbonate Whatman Track-ethched 30 nm Nuclepore membrane, were employed to produce nanoemulsions, and using the same mixed surfactant system and relative compositions. The energy inputs of these two methods were compared and discussed along with their efficiencies in terms of producing nanoemulsions presenting improved stabilities, smaller hydrodynamic sizes and narrower hydrodynamic size distributions. References [1] M.P. Krafft, A. Chittofrati, J.G. Riess, Curr Opin in Colloid Interface Sci., 8 (2003) 251–258 [2] E. Piacentini, E. Drioli, L. Giorno, J. of Membr. Sci., 468 (2014) 410–42